(1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to silver halide color photographic light-sensitive materials and more particularly to silver halide color photographic light-sensitive materials having good graininess, high sensitivity and excellent desilvering properties.
(2) Prior Art
It has generally been known that a silver halide color photographic light-sensitive material exhibiting excellent graininess and high sensitivity can be obtained by increasing the iodine content of the silver halide. However, it is also known that various troubles arise associated with the continuous processing of such light-sensitive material of which iodine content is increased. That is, although color development generally comprises color developing process, desilvering process and water washing-stabilization process, it is required in the desilvering process to remove all the silver halides contained in the light-sensitive material and elemental silver formed during development (hereunder referred to as "developed silver"), and, in the case of such a light-sensitive material, a great amount of iodide ions is accumulated in the desilvering process, which leads to greatly lower desilvering properties thereof.
Furthermore if bleaching-fixing treatment is employed as the desilvering process, not only the fixing ability but also the bleaching ability thereof are lowered as iodide ions are accumulated in the bleaching-fixing process. Generally, to the bleaching-fixing bath, there is added a bleaching accelerator such as various mercapto compounds as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,893,858; U.K. Patent No. 1,138,842 and Japanese Patent Un-examined Published Application (hereinafter referred to as "J.P. KOKAI") No. 53-141623; compounds having disulfide bonds as disclosed in J.P. KOKAI No. 53-95630; thiazolidine derivatives as disclosed in Japanese Patent Publication for Opposition Purpose (hereinafter referred to as "J.P. KOKOKU") No. 53-9854; isothiourea derivatives as disclosed in J.P. KOKAI No. 53-94927; thiourea derivatives as disclosed in J.P. KOKOKU Nos. 45-8506 and 49-26586; thioamide compounds as disclosed in J.P. KOKAI No. 49-42349; dithiocarbamates as disclosed in J.P. KOKAI No. 55-26506; or arylene diamine compounds as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,552,834. However, the bleaching ability of the bleaching-fixing bath in which lots of iodide ions are accumulated cannot be recovered sufficiently even if such a bleaching accelerator is added.
On the other hand, as a means for removing bromide ions accumulated in a color developer so as to stably hold the developing activity of such a developer, for instance, J.P. KOKAI No. 61-56345 discloses that in a color photographic light-sensitive material having light-sensitive silver halide emulsion layers containing silver chlorobromide, a cation exchange resin or an onium compound is added to non-light-sensitive layers thereof disposed on the side of a substrate opposite to that having the light-sensitive layers.
However, the light-sensitive material according to the above-described methods is inferior in graininess and sensitivity compared with those containing silver iodide because the silver chlorobromide is used as light-sensitive silver halides. In addition, this method has no problem of desilvering properties because silver iodide is not used.